Peter Saul

Infobox Artist
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name = Peter Saul


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birthdate = 1934
location = San Francisco, California
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nationality = American
field = Painter
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movement = Pop Art & Neo-Expressionism
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awards = Guggenheim Fellowship

Peter Saul is an American painter born in 1934 in San Francisco, California. His work, which has connections with Pop Art, figurative art, and Expressionism, became known and somewhat successful in the 1960s. He continues to paint provocative, well-reviewed, and collected paintings.

Formation

Peter Saul studied at the California School of Fine Arts from 1950 to 1952, and at Washington University from 1952 to 1956, before traveling to Europe, where he remained until 1962.

Saul was inspired equally by comic books as he was by the Surrealists and remained an unrelenting critic of various aspects of American culture. In the 60’s, Peter Saul was associated with a group of imagists in Chicago called the "Hairy Who" that disavowed the various New York styles or schools of the moment. Instead they focused on the human image, conflated elements of high and low culture, were extremely anti-authoritative and promoted a particularly intense political critique. [ [http://www.bombsite.com/issues/104/articles/3144] Saul Ostrow "Peter Saul", BOMB Magazine, Summer 2008]

A parodist and an absurdist, he comments mordantly on aspects of contemporary life, ranging from art, to politics, to the current infatuation with the past. Using garish Day-Glo colors, he creates often crowded canvases filled with violently caricatured and grossly exaggerated forms, misspelled words, puns and odd perspectives. His works both influenced and were influenced by the underground comic books of the early 1970s. [Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Artists"]

Influence

Peter Saul's early use of pop culture cartoon references in the very early 1960s while living in Paris, situates him as one of the few fathers of the Pop Art movement. Moreover, the influence of Saul’s paintings (with their cartoony figures, lurid-lush colors, splatter-film expressionism and contrarian take on topical subjects) pervades much of recent art in the late 2000s. It has strongly contributed to major careers, like those of Carroll Dunham, Elizabeth Murray and Peter Doig, amoung countless others. Moreover, it has paved the way for the ironic-bad Neo-Surrealist noodlings of countless student painters spilling out of art schools everywhere straight into the arms of a ravenous nouveau riche art market (hopefully), such as the Stuckists. [Holland Cotter, "Peter Saul Manifesto", August 15 2008 New York Times ]

Timeline

*1950-52 California School of Fine Arts
*1952-56 Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis
*1956-64 Living in the Netherlands, Paris, and Rome
*1964-74 Living in Mill Valley, CA
*1974-75 Living in Port Costa, CA
*1975-81 Living in Chappaqua, NY
*1981-2000 Living in Austin, Texas; teaching at the University of Texas
*2000 - Living in New York City and Germantown, NY

Awards

*1964 Art in America “New Talent” Award and Copley Foundation Award
*1979 National Endowment for the Arts Endowment
*1985 National Endowment for the Arts Endowment
*1993 Guggenheim Fellowship
*2001 Academy Award for Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters

Biography

*1934   Born in San Francisco, CA
*1950 - 1952   California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco
*1952 - 1956   Washington University, BFA, St. Louis
*1956 - 1964   Lives in Holland, Paris, and Rome
*1964   Receives Art in America “New Talent” Award and Copley Foundation Award
*1964 - 1974   Returns to United States and settles in Mill Valley, California
*1975 - 1981   Lives in Chappaqua, New York
*1961 - 1987   Exhibits regularly at Alan Frumkin Gallery, New York and Chicago
*1989 - 1995   Exhibits regularly at Frumkin/Adams Gallery, New York
*1981 - 2000   Lives in Austin, Texas; teaches at the University of Texas
*2000   Moves to New York City
*2001   Academy Award for Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters
* Currently lives and works in New York State

elected exhibitions

*2007   Mr. President, University Art Museum at Albany, NY
*2007   Humor’s Lines, Maier Museum of Art, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, Virginia
*2007   Galerie Charlotte Moser, Geneva (solo)
*2006   David Nolan Gallery, New York (solo)
*2006   Leo Koenig Inc., New York (solo)
*2006   Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina
*2006   Twice Drawn, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York
*2006   The Artful Jester, The Painting Center, New York; Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Vermont
*2005 - 2006   Art of Engagement: Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, California
*2005   Looking at Words, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
*2005   Post War Draughtswomen and 1 Monitor, Meyer Riegger Gallery, Karlsruhe, Germany
*2005   Body Language, George Adams Gallery, New York
*2005   Peintures, 1985 – 2005, Musée Paul Valèry, Sète, France (solo)
*2004 - 2005   Disparities and Deformities: Our Grotesque, Site Santa Fe, New Mexico
*2004   Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York (solo)
*2004   Suburbia: Paintings and Drawings, 1965-69, George Adams Gallery, New York (solo)
*2003   Drawings, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco (solo)
*2003   As time goes by, Leo Koenig Inc., New York
*2002   Jokes, Musée d`Art moderne et contemporain, Geneva
*2002   Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne (solo)
*2002   The Sixties, Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York (solo)
*2002   Galerie Charlotte Moser, Geneva (solo)
*2001   Open Ends, Museum of Modern Art, New York
*2000   Face to Face, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
*2000   Heads: 1986-2000, Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York (solo)
*2000   Galerie du Centre, Paris (solo)
*1999   Artists for Mumia 911, George Adams Gallery, NYC
*1999   Musée de l`Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d`Olonne
*1999   Peter Sual: Ptgs, 1987-1999, George Adams Gallery, NYC
*1998   Peter Saul, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
*1997   Face à l`histoire, Centre Pompidou, Paris
*1997   Alliance for Contemp. Art:Auction '98, Denver Art Museum Colorado
*1996 - 1997   Art in Chicago: 1945-1995, Museum of Contemp. Art Chicago
*1995   Grotesque, Museum of Modern Art, NYC
*1995   Whitney Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
*1995   Old & New: On Canvas & on Paper, Galerie Bonnier, Geneva
*1991   Galerie Thomas R. Monahan Chicago, IL
*1991   Un Touch Suisse, Galerie Bonnier, Geneva
*1990   Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans
*1989   Aspen Art Museum, Aspen
*1989   Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
*1988   Pop Apocalypse, Gracie Mansion Gallery, NYC
*1987   Repulsion: Aesthetics of Grotesque, Alternative Museum, NYC
*1986   Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
*1986   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
*1986   Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
*1985   Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York
*1981   Retrospective Exhibition, Kilcawley Center Youngstown State U., Ohio
*1980   Figurative Tradition&Whitney Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
*1977   Images of Horror and Fanstasy, Bronx Museum of Art, NYC
*1973   Galerie Klang, Cologne
*1969   Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
*1969   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
*1969   Violence in Recent American Art, Museum of Contemp. Art, Chicago
*1968   Paris Biennale International, Museum of Modern Art, Paris
*1968   The Museum of Modern Art, New York
*1968   San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco
*1963 - 1964   Rolf Nelson Gallery, Los Angeles
*1963   New Directions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA

Books

"Peter Saul" Exh. cat. Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (Hatje Cantz, 2008), ISBN 978-3-7757-2204-9

Footnotes